


all of a sudden i miss everyone

by dellaluce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:30:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dellaluce/pseuds/dellaluce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>karkat says he's being an idiot, but this is the smartest he's felt in a long, long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all of a sudden i miss everyone

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for the 1/22 updates.

**aquarius rising**

He hates the taste of it in his mouth, this water. He can breathe it, but it isn't his; tastes like salt and acid. Hurts his eyes and his gums and leaves a layer of crystal crust along his gill-slits. Dries his eyes out. Scratches his throat. He eats his food and it doesn't matter, because everything just tastes like salt and acid and sharp metal on his tongue.

And it doesn't make sense. His heart beats out a rich, velvety purple. This is his domain.

 _So why does it hurt?_

 _  
_

**pisces on the cusp of the second house**

She's a princess in wait and she's supposed to stay in hiding. Needs to. Has to. Delicate and fragile and the whole world could come down in just one breathtaking, billowing cloud of rose--so she has to stay locked in the deeps, stay where the pressure aches and the cold burns.

And maybe that's where she could've stayed forever, safe from the headhunters, but she doesn't. Doesn't want to, doesn't think she needs to. She dips and glides and swims, skims the reefs and chases fish and laughs with the joy of it, because why not? Why should she worry? Arrogant in her innocence and beautiful in her freedom, her belonging, and he thinks-- _is this what it's like at the top?_

Empress regnant, born and bred, that rose-blood that runs thicker and smarter and faster than his ever would. She ducks through the sea grass like she owns it because she _does_. This is _her_ domain. She just lets him live here.

Maybe that's why he feels all wrong in these bones, in this slick, slippery skin. Maybe he was never meant for it at all.

 _He needs a princess to be a prince. The infante never claims the throne._

 _  
_

**third house mars conjunct moon in aries**

He helps her hide the only way he knows how.

She screams the first time. _Get it out of here_ , and it's shrill and high-pitched and vibrates all the little bones in his ears. _Get it out, get it out, get it out, are you insane?_

 _Course not_ , he spits, and tucks his lips into a frown. _I'm the most logical fuckin' one here. But you're right, she's gonna live forever on kelp and magic fairy dust, just like you._

He drags his tribute out into the open sea--a waterbeast, chrome scales shining in the shafts of sunlight, bleeding out all that gorgeous royal purple in thick, silky trails--and it doesn't matter that she doesn't appreciate it. It's for her own good.

 _And he'll turn the ocean black and bloodsick if that's what it takes to make her see._

 _  
_

**gemini on the imum coeli**

The first time he gulps down surface air, it all makes sense.

He breaks into the middle of a storm, breathes in rain and lightning and thunder; it fills his lungs sweet and easy, and he smells ozone, smells wet earth on the wind, and it's the best thing he's ever smelled because it isn't salt, it isn't acid or metal, and it's _his_.

The shore mud shifts beneath his feet, forms to fit him, feels slick between the webbing of his toes. It's awful. It's disgusting. It's _fantastic_. He feels solid for the first time in his life, like he has heft and mass and a body. The earth moves by the nature of his existence, displaced by the weight of him, remembers him in the way it keeps his footprints. It knows him. It yields to him. And it feels more like home than the ocean ever did.

This is his domain, he decides: the sky and the earth, the wind and the mud, the sand and the rain and the shoreline that meets her in the shallows. One foot on the land that knows him, one foot in the water that swallows him, and an eye to the clouds that he wants to touch.

The rest might try to stop him, if they knew--if _she_ knew--but it doesn't really matter. He may not be the heir apparent, he may just be an _infante_ , but the blood on his cracked lips is worth more than all the thin wash in the world. If it's his, then it's _his_.

 _She wouldn't want it anyway. And doesn't he deserve to have something of his own, for once?_

 _  
_

**taurus/scorpio intercepted in the third/ninth houses**

 _She'll never eat all of these_ , she says, and there's something in her voice that might've been despair if she knew anything about that. _Why did you get so many? This is cruel._

 _Just what was leftover from the game_ , he lies. She shakes her head and loops half a dozen of the smaller ones in her net, swims off and down and into the deeps without so much as a word, and he's _angry_. Empress regnant, born and bred-- _why should a queen be thankful?_

The water strains with the bloat of corpses, blobs of form and color he can barely see through the murk, and he wonders if anything will ever be enough for her.

There's only one way to find out.

 _He counts bodies like he counts stairs: all the way up, 'til there's nothing left to count._

 _  
_

**saturn on the descendant**

It doesn't make sense. His heart beats out a rich, velvety purple. He's royalty--he's built for her, _made_ for her, a right hand to end all right hands, the one person willing to turn the ocean black and bloodsick just to keep her safe. He'd bring the world to its knees for her. _He knows because he's tried._

 _So why does it hurt?_

He bites his lip and all he tastes is salt and acid and sharp metal on his tongue.

 _Because a princess with the throne in her hands doesn't need the infante._

 _  
_

**jupiter feral in tenth house sagittarius**

So he stops being one.

It rolls off his teeth like a song: _Prince of Hope_. The others can laugh at him if they want, but he loves the title, takes it in as his, owns it all the way down to his bones. He doesn't need a princess of the deeps anymore, not when he's a prince all on his own, not when he's made for wind and rain, made for arcs of electricity and rolling gunshots of thunder that echo in his spine. He needs to go up; he needs to break surface. She'd only drag him down.

The clouds churn with red lightning and glowing, pulsing smoke, fanned by wingbeats, and this is his planet. His planet, his title, all his, and the way it surges through him feels perfect. Effortless. Beautiful.

So it only makes sense that his first act as prince is to bring it all down.

His hesitation melts with the feathers, with flesh and bone, boiled away with the blood as he shoots an angel from the sky. It's the first of many.

Karkat says he's being an idiot, but this is the smartest he's felt in a long, long time.

 _Because he's a prince. And that means he's not done climbing yet._

 _  
_

**venus retrograde in libra**

 _Why are you doing this?_ she screams, all shrill, all vibrations in his ear, a tinny hum that makes his eyes hurt. It's never good enough for her, as usual; she'll never see that it's for her own good, to protect her from the dredges and the slime and the sludge that try to seep through the cracks in her picture-perfect princess innocence. She won't protect herself and he's the only one who'd bring the world to its knees for her, so the job falls to him. It's always fallen to him.

He has a dozen answers: _'Cause I'm better than him; 'cause it's for your own good; 'cause he's a filthy fucking scumlicking landdweller, can't even match his own shoes; 'cause you shouldn't love him, when he's muddy yellow all the damn way down._

He only gives her a question: _Why couldn't it be me?_

When it's over--when he can't move without splintering, when he's leaving sticky patterns on the stone with all his beautiful, velvety purple; when the pressure to breathe aches too much to fight and he can't feel how the fire burns--he gets his answer in the way his hand curls around nothing.

 _She's ten feet away and she doesn't even say she's sorry._

 _  
_

**peregrine sun**

And this is what it's come down to.

He was never good enough for her--too much _infante_ , too much purple, not enough pink, not enough cheerful fucking rose flowing through the miles of him. The water always made him sick, and she made him sicker through the years, the way she dragged him by the collar with a grin like everything happened for a reason, like everything was going to be fine. He believed her, and he believed in her, which is why he gave her everything he had.

 _He'd make the world kneel. She doesn't have to settle for empress, not when Jack is a god._

And this is what it's come down to.

His hesitation melts with her skin, with her scales, boils away with her blood and her heart, collapses with her ribs and her lungs. It's over in one sizzling spray of beautiful, perfect, delicate rose, the one color he'd worked his whole fucking life to never have to see--but always knew he would, one day.

All those years protecting her and he never thought it'd be him.

 _He gave her every chance._

 _  
_

**aquarius rising**

They laughed at him: _Prince of Hope_. It was a nothing title, a platitude, challenges that never made any sense on a world that didn't want him there, all claws and feathers and shrieking, screaming rage. He just liked the way it felt--that someone, that _something_ , finally saw that he was no watery _infante_ , no branch family, nothing to be swept aside when convenience dictated.

And it's a relief, really, this thing that swells in the hollows of his chest where real feelings used to go. It's a relief to know that it was never his domain; that he was meant for more than salt and sea, that he was meant to go where even angels feared to tread. He was meant for the sky, for rain and thunder and lightning, sitting in the shadow of wings bigger than he could ever hope to be.

He lifts the tiara from her forehead, smudges away spatters of blood with his thumb, rubs it on his shirt until he can see his face in the shine. Maybe this was his challenge all along. Maybe this was his lesson. He thinks he's got the gist of it now.

 _Princes take the throne when all the kings and queens are dead._


End file.
